natural light

When my good friend Jones came over from the States for a visit this last summer, I had the chance to do some tourism at home. Even though we explored the town in which I’ve worked for 8 years, I had the rare pleasure of seeing my surroundings in a way that I’m not accustomed. As a tourist. Not on my way to or from work, not walking around town on an ever-too-short lunchbreak. No schedule, whatsoever. It was a nice experience. I’ll have to do it again sometime.

When my good friend Jones came over from the States for a visit this last summer, I had the chance to do some tourism at home. Even though we explored the town in which I’ve worked for 8 years, I had the rare pleasure of seeing my surroundings in a way that I’m not accustomed. As a tourist. Not on my way to or from work, not walking around town on an ever-too-short lunchbreak. No schedule, whatsoever. It was a nice experience. I’ll have to do it again sometime.

Oxford draws a lot of artists, so the Bodleian Library is not a surprising place to find someone with a sketching table and project. This is local painter, Merlin Porter. While we were talking, we exchanged business cards, but not before he busied himself with his own card. What happened in that very brief moment was an instant pencil portrait of me with my camera. Coolest thing ever.

In preparation for Copper Impressions – The 18th Century Printmaking Revolution, an exhibition and printmaking demonstration at Christ Church Library in Oxford, carpenters worked alongside Professor Michael Phillips, internationally recognized William Blake scholar, to assemble the pieces of a copper-plate printing press that Phillips used in his workshops.

This press, a working replica of the one used by 19th-century poet, painter, and printmaker, William Blake, was built locally by Buckinghamshire maker/designer, Josh Howard-Saunders, and it arrived at The Library just following its recent stay in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.